Here on earth, when you’re born, you’re issued a computer. The computer you get varies in terms of how powerful it is, but the average computer is so powerful that we, as a species, have never made a computer, even a super, 2-square-block computer that can even come close to the computing ability of the one everyone gets when they’re born. These computers are powerful enough to build buildings, bridges, satellites, and synthesize nature to create things like steel and diodes and candy bars and dildos shaped like dolphins. These computers, everybody gets one, remember, are so fucking powerful that they have figured out how to go inside people and fix things that are wrong with them on molecular levels. The full potential of these computers is still very much unknown. We have a little known statistic here on earth that says ‘only one percent of the earth’s inhabitable space is on land, and of the other 99%, we’ve explored less than 10% of it.’ Believe it or not, we know somehow even LESS about these computers that we all have. But make no mistake: They’re powerful. They’re the most powerful things that we have at our disposal by far.

Now, last time I checked it out, we were hovering around 6 billion people on this earth, with more people showing up every day. That’s a LOT of supercomputers. The thing is, have you heard the theory that if you put a bunch of monkeys in front of a bunch of typewriters, eventually you’ll get the complete works of Shakespeare? Of course you have. That’s a program that’s more or less wired into the server that most of us westerners have our computers aligned with (my own personal computer does NOT like this theory, however…I believe much more in entropy, but that’s neither here nor there and I’m realizing that I’m dangerously out of my element as I type this, so nevermind all that for now…I need these monkeys and their typewriters to prove a point anyway). Well, the idea is that in great numbers of regeneration, there’s gonna be some spectacularly anomalous stuff going on. And with all these people coming to earth, and all these supercomputers being handed out, the amount of anomalous stuff happening is through the roof.

Some people are born with a computer that only barely keeps them alive. Some people are born with a computer that makes them so smart that their computers aren’t compatible with any other computers. Some people’s computers start out fine, but then someone else with a faulty computer goes in and rewires it and fucks their computer all up in the process. In short, there are a lot of extremely powerful computers out there, with unbelievable potential that are malfunctioning.

The funny thing is, here in America, we’ve closed down all the supercomputer repair shops except for the ones that are located inside jails. Beyond that, because these computers are SO powerful, we, as a nation have decided to be very, very afraid of people with malfunctioning computers to the point where we stigmatize and marginalize them. Consider that.

Someone is walking around with a malfunctioning computer that’s so powerful that it has the potential to create an atomic bomb, and we don’t have any repair shops open for them to just walk into and seek help. I’ve crisscrossed this country more times than I can count and I’ve seen lots of mental hospitals, and you know what they all have in common? They’re abandoned. Somehow, even with all this unbelievable computing power at our disposal, the best notion we’ve come up with in this country is that we wait for these people with their malfunctioning computers to commit a crime and THEN we send them in for repair. That seems crazy to the point of insane irresponsibility. Of course, here in America, our server is full to the brim with ways to scapegoat and blame, so we like to blame people’s parents and we like to blame situations and inanimate objects for things, but the truth is, really, we’re just pretending two insane things: 1) that these computers aren’t as powerful as they are and 2) that a malfunctioning computer is an extremely rare anomaly. Well, the truth is otherwise. Everyone’s malfunctioning just a little bit these days.

Now, on top of all these malfunctioning computers, this part of the world that I live in has a strange relationship with bullets. People love having the power to throw bullets through other people or animals or things at excruciatingly deadly speeds. There are all sorts of machines that do this, ranging from tiny little guys that you can keep in your boot, to big gigantic tubes that hold tons and tons of bullets and are designed for killing tons and tons of things at once. Some people think that when God made America, he gave us the right to have guns with the ability to kill as many people or things as possible in as short a time possible. Other people think that the guns that kill super fast should only be in the hands of the military and still OTHER people think that guns are very bad and that all guns should be eliminated from society, and we should have police in schools and on planes and so on and so forth, just to make sure that everyone stays safe.

Whenever people die from being shot with bullets, which seems to be all the time around here, these three groups begin yelling as loudly as possible. Usually, all three are so busy yelling their own ideas that they don’t listen to each other at all (this is actually the way that almost all arguments go around here, even unimportant ones), but here’s the thing:

If you take away everyone’s guns, then the only people who will have guns will be the cops and the bad guys. Now, I don’t want to sound like a Montana Militia dude, but a world where there are cops on every corner and the only people with guns are the cops and the bad guys sounds like one of the scariest dystopian shitscapes imaginable. People SHOULD be allowed to own guns, if for no other reason than because if they don’t, well, if and when the shit goes down (whatever said shit may be) I don’t want to have to depend on the cops and badguys to protect my family and interests. That sounds scary.

Now, having said that, I think we can all agree that enough people in America with severely malfunctioning computers have gotten their hands on assault rifles and used them to do enough unspeakable, unimaginable, horrible, nightmare inducing things that the idea of killing a whole flock of geese at once (for example) can’t POSSIBLY be enough of a reason to justify keeping these extremely dangerous weapons around. I guess, when it comes down to it, I fall into the group that thinks that people should be allowed to have guns, but not the super-killy ones, because, well, there are simply TOO MANY malfunctioning supercomputers out there, and if we’re gonna just sit around and ignore the fact that all these computers are malfunctioning, the least we can possibly do is make sure that it’s nigh impossible for the people under the command of these faulty computers to get guns that kill big flocks of people quickly and at once.

Now, if I can shift gears a moment, let me say the following: having a penis is a full time job, as any male over the age of about 11 will tell you. You think about your penis all the time, you’re constantly looking out for how to potentially get your penis into situations where it’s in the best possible spots, where someone’s taking care of your penis really nicely, and if your penis gets hurt, it’s devastating. Women can never understand, truly, what it’s like to get hit in the nuts. I know that giving birth involves a crazy pain that I can’t imagine, and I’m not trying to compare the two at all. I’m just saying that when you’re sitting around and you’re watching a skateboard blooper reel, for example, and a guy racks his nuts on a handrail, everyone cringes, but people with penises can actually kind of FEEL it. They know, just from being connected to their own fragile penises that pain that starts in the gut and goes all the way up the back of your throat, lasts for 3 days, and makes you nauseous and sometimes even barf. Having a penis is something you can’t truly understand unless you have one. You can’t understand how much of your mental space it takes up, or how badly they hurt when injured and even how badly you hurt when someone ELSE’S wang gets crushed.

Having children is the exact same way. You cannot imagine how much time I spend thinking about my kids, how much I spend every waking moment worrying about getting them into the best possible situations where people will take good care of them, and when I see or read about kids, ANY kids being hurt or abused, it crushes my soul on a level that, unless you have kids, you can’t fathom. I know this because for the last 3 days, I’ve been thinking about how I would have reacted to this Connecticut shooting before I had kids. And I know how I would have reacted: I would have been horrified, I would have been angry and I would have been disgusted, but ultimately it would have been just another heinous tragedy that passed my radar and made me vaguely more disgusted with humanity. It would not have terrified and shaken me to my core, that’s for sure. But man…shit done changed, son. And I’m shaken to the core. I can’t explain it. Either you’ve got kids, and you know exactly what I’m talking about or you don’t and you think you understand what I’m saying but you don’t. As someone who’s both had and not had kids in this lifetime, I feel pretty confident in speaking for both camps here. This entire thing is so fucking horrifying on so many levels.

The problem is clearly that there’s just not enough of a dialog about mental illness in this country and the infrastructure that we had to deal with mental illness has been dismantled and now exists almost exclusively in our prison system (which doesn’t do much for powderkeg types who haven’t yet committed any crimes). This whole thing is very fucked up and extremely sad, and while everyone bemoans ‘the hillbillies and their guns’ and ‘the libtard shitheads who want to take away my guns’ the real problem is that we don’t seem to want to take care of our sick in this country. If I got cancer tomorrow, it would bankrupt my family and that’s just the way it is. If I blew a gasket and became mentally unstable, there’d be no one for my wife to call to get me and/or take care of me because I’ve never been convicted of any crimes. All anyone can come up with is militarizing safe zones, but putting cops in a school is no substitute for caring for the sick. It’s like putting a Band Aid on a slit throat.

The other side of this, is the clackamas shooting. Not being reported is that after killing two people the shooter was confronted by a young man with his conceal and carry. This young man did NOT fire on the shooter, as he was afraid he could possibly injure someone else. However, the shooter then retreated to a stairwell and killed himself.

I own guns, and I have kids. My guns are 1. In a safe with a 7 digit code my kids will never know 2. have chain locks through the barrel 3. Have trigger locks. The keys to the locks are on a chain around my neck. My wife and I are getting our conceal and carry permits because there are just too many ‘broken computers’ these days.

Our local school district has schools locked down 24/7 and resource officers (off duty police) in each of the schools everyday. I appreciate that now more than ever.

Brendan, excellent points on ‘having kids’, you just don’t understand until you have them. My brother called me yelling about my guns and kids after this tragedy. I insisted that he not talk to me about guns, it’s a much bigger issue and as he doesn’t have kids he can’t POSSIBLY begin to understand how much this hurt. His reply was “I love your kids as much as you do” and I let it go, no point in escalating. But ya, until you have kids you can’t comprehend that love. You just can’t.

I almost lost my son this past summer in an accident where our lawn tractor brake got knocked off and he rolled down the hill into our neighbor’s house and it flipped on top of him, he had just turned 2. It was the most frightening moment of my life, he is fine now, but I can’t explain those emotions to someone. No other fear comes close to that.

What these parents and siblings must be going through is beyond understanding. It breaks my heart, it really does…and I’m generally an unsympathetic asshole. I wish they still had their babies.

Hey Seth, it’s sweet that you take all those precautions with your weapons, but I still feel that anybody carrying a concealed firearm is straight up being disrespectful to the rest of humanity who want nothing to do with guns.

99.9% of the time, you carrying that weapon does nothing but introduce a loaded weapon into situations that may otherwise have none.

I don’t like it. Not one bit.

This isn’t a personal dig at you, just how I feel about people walking around with weapons I can’t see. You may check out, but how do I know you aren’t going to have a bad day?

This sums up my thoughts as well. If you’re on the side that thinks everyone should be allowed to carry guns, then you don’t want to have that discussion. But personally, that’s my idea of chaos and I can’t really live in ignorant bliss while people walk down the streets with concealed killing machines.

Not that I’ve ever been shot at, but I’ve always gotten the impression it’s not really like an RPG where you get to choose what move you want to retaliate with. The “defense” argument makes zero sense. And if you’ve got your guns so safely locked up, how long is it going to take you to get it out when you need it? I think guns are super helpful when your intent is to go and shoot someone but they make for terrible shields.

I’d much rather it was just the cops and “bad guys” with guns. A “good guy” having a gun is pretty redundant but when good guys can have guns, it’s even easier for the bad guys to get em’ too. They’re not swords and having one doesn’t make it an even fight. It’s just another gun out there and in another person’s hand.

And I don’t really trust other people judgements of themselves. Even if a person’s sane, what about when perfectly fine computers go faulty?

I don’t have an answer for police brutality but thinking having a gun keeps you safer from it, to me, is a fantasy.

I would love a perfect little world where everyone’s happy and weapons like this don’t exist, I wish my kids could grow up there. The facts are that there are 300 million guns in the US. They aren’t going anywhere, that’s the reality.

You’re living in ignorant bliss now, there are already people walking around with concealed killing machines. The ‘bad guys’ you speak of are going to get them regardless, drugs are illegal and yet somehow we still have drug addicts all over the place. Police exist for AFTER crimes take place, they are usually minutes away. I for one would hope another citizen like you or I would intervene in these cases and save people’s lives. Armed or not, the criminals will be.

I do agree though, these aren’t ‘defensive’ items and people that say they are, well…that’s delusional. They are for killing, whether that be animals or people. They serve no other purpose

Mexico banned guns and the US government sold them illegally to Mexican drug cartels. And we’re supposed to trust their decision making on this front?

Yeah, that’s what I said, that I CAN’T live in ignorant bliss. Because I know that’s going on.

Giving everyone a gun doesn’t make bad people any less dangerous. It’s actually you living in ignorant bliss. Yes, bad people will always get a hold of guns if they want them. All you’re doing is making it easier for them though and you prevent nothing at all in the process but you keep telling yourself you are.

Obviously if no one had a gun I wouldn’t want cops to have guns either. I don’t think anyone really trusts cops but I sure as fuck don’t trust everyone to be a cop.

Here’s the way I see it. You’re packing heat. I’m someone who feels really uncomfortable in the presence of guns and for arguments sake I have a strong moral objection to them.

You come in my business with a concealed weapon. Why does your right to carry something very dangerous and something I strongly object to, HIDDEN, in my place of business?

Carrying a gun is a false sense of security. Maybe you’ve had proper training and experience with using weapons like this but a lot of people don’t, and a gun in the hands of someone with the best intentions but who doesn’t know how to use it can be just as horrifying as one in the hands of a “bad guy”.

So far the wisdom has been easier access to mental health treatment, and the illegilization of assault rifles, both of which I agree with. However the sad reality is we’ve already shot our wad and can’t put the jizz back in our penis. The proliferation of violence and mental health impairment is too widely flourish and while we may limit some of these instances, they will continue to occur. As a parent of two young boys, I feel defeated knowing that.

Here’s a real knee-slapper: my eldest was diagnosed with Downs in utero. We were given the choice to abort and chose not to. He was born perfectly fine (with a minor kidney issue that was quickly repaired) and, of our three kids, he is by far the most advanced.

I guess I should elaborate and say that the false positive came from the Quad Screening and then they took a look for physical signs, with the kidney issue being the indicator. It was at that time we were given the option to go through the dreaded Amino Test, all while conversations about aborting were taking place with the Genetics Counselor. Anyway, there is the possibility that the amino test would have caught it but we just ended the conversation and said that we would have him, no matter what.

The frightening thing is false positives are fairly common and, as xacd points out, the majority of individuals make the choice to abort.

De-institutionalization began way back in the fifties and carries on somewhat through today. I can’t remember the name, (Running on four hours with a morning shift six hours from now– food service, yay!) but a book was released depicting one person’s experience after having faked their way into a mental hospital. What they found was a terrible, sad institution that abused and neglected their patients.

That hospital was shut down. This was a proper response.

Then every OTHER hospital was shut down, because the public went stir crazy with concern and figured that shutting the all mental hospitals down was the best possible response, but didn’t care long enough to stick around to force their politicians to establish new methods of handling the faulty computers. Those computers ended up on the street, meaning a massive chunk of our current homeless population comes from that group.

Of course, politicians were happy to go along with this, because it made budgets tidier and pleased the public. The end result, however, is the utter lack of proper facilities, which we are now realizing in an economic recession, meaning no one can do shit about it, so it’ll just be forgotten, as it has been time and time again for half a century.

It’s easily one of the greatest problems in the history of modern Psychology. We’re still scrambling to figure out how to deal with things, and really, the only true way to handle it would be with enough government funding to truly help these people, rather then sending them to underfunded prison facilities that don’t accomplish shit.

I know what you mean, Brendan. I thought the exact same thing, before kids I would have been angry and heartbroken, but it’s just a crushing pain thinking about these kids. I think when you have kids, as cliche as it sounds, you learn what it means to be truly innocent – undeserving of the slightest bit of pain or harm, and then to know that these little ones suffered, so goddamn scared out of their minds if they even understood what was going on – it just hurts so bad.

“99.9% of the time, you carrying that weapon does nothing but introduce a loaded weapon into situations that may otherwise have none.

I don’t like it. Not one bit.

This isn’t a personal dig at you, just how I feel about people walking around with weapons I can’t see.”

This happens ANYWAYS. By CRIMINALS.

Does that not make you queasy? The thought of irresponsible people sulking around, with a weapon that isn’t maintained, that they don’t practice using, that isn’t sighted in and they haven’t a clue how to control their nerves in a sudden frenetic situation?

The opposite of that:

Someone who was checked by the federal government, who paid their money to buy a gun legally, who practices and took the extra measure of training to receive their Concealed Carry Permit, who is confident with their handling of their gun and have a plan of action when a sudden frenetic situation DOES happen.

You tell me again who you want around.

Show me an incident of a concealed carry permit holder who was grossly irresponsible with their weapon, and I’ll show you a baker’s dozen and more of situations where a concealed carry permit holder – or hell, just a gun owner in general – PREVENTED lives from being hurt and ultimately lost.

Which would he “rather” have? I like how you disingenuously present this as an either/or scenario. Option C? Neither? I know…wish I may, wish I might. I believe you meant “Would you rather have JUST “criminals” (who, like “real people”, span the full range of mental competence/stability/morals and aren’t necessarily loose screws out to just mow down some pedestrians at the park; a firearm could just be for protection/an intimidation prop) tootin’ around with these, or would you rather have even MORE potential flying bullets introduced into any given scenario (on account of LICENSED, CERTIFIED gun-owners who are thus GUARANTEED mentally sound, and bolstered by EXTENSIVE TRAINING which makes them infallible in a panic-stricken real world scenario, just as zit-faced teenage Taekwondo blackbelts never get their asses handed to them in street fights)? Well shit, it’s so obvious!

Now, that having been said, yeah, sure, I DO like the idea some noble deadeye cowboy just MIGHT be on hand should an individual with more nefarious intentions start waving one of these little metallic dick surrogates around, but, point being, your reductive justification isn’t NEARLY the cut and dry no-brainer you make it out to be.

Thank you. You wrote pretty much what I was thinking as I was reading her comment. Oh, and for the example of the CC permit person being grossly irresponsible…..How about this one lady in CT that let her crazy kid get his hands on her legally owned guns and kill 28 people? You owe me 28 bakers dozen examples of CC heroes!

The right amount of guns is zero. England has it right. Dipshits on the streets don’t have them. Criminals can’t steal them from the dipshits because they don’t exist. Cops don’t need them because dipshits and criminals don’t have them.

I’m not attempting to talk in extremes – I’m giving a very real and substantiated scenario. It is of course understood that not every scenario will be precisely like this, I didn’t think I had to spell that out.

The mother of the killer in Connecticut . . . well, she can’t very well defend herself, now can she? Her son shot her in the head. We don’t know how he had access to her guns but that kind of isn’t the point; guns are very easy to get on the street, just like those other illegal things – drugs. And why aren’t we discussing mental health instead of tools?

Legal gun ownership has increased at the same time violent crime overall has decreased in this country. It was true this year and it was true last year and has been true since the early 90s. At the time of the decline, only a few states had a form of carry permit. Now, currently only Illinois has outdated and restrictive laws punishing law-abiding citizens – and finally common sense prevailed and the laws will be changing.

The majority of studies on ‘firearm crime’ do not remove the vast instances where said firearm was used in a suicide. As sad as that is, it greatly skews the numbers of gun-related ‘crime’.

You mentioned England. Homicide rates in the UK have stayed around 52% higher than before the gun law of 1968. England is on its 4th consecutive year of rising violent crime.

The Australian Bureau of Criminology announced, 5 years after its gun ban, that there is no correlation between gun control and firearms in violent crime. In 2006 assault had risen by 49.2%, rape by 29.9%.

Since Chicago’s handgun ban, the percentage of handgun murders has averaged about 40% higher than before the ban.

This tells me that criminals ignore the laws, and law-abiding civilians are defenseless.

Colorado allowed concealed carry in 2003 and while Colorado State allowed students to carry, University of Colorado decided the opposite. Colorado State saw a 60% decrease in crime while the University of Colorado saw a 35% increase in that same time period.

This, amongst the tons of other data, tells me that criminals are in fact deterred by the possibility of their victims packing heat as well.

It’s very plain to me that guns are a tool, nothing more, and they give someone like me, a woman, the chance to level the playing field against much larger man who wants to sexually assault me or even kill me. No one has the right to veto my life, my health, or my liberty.

If people thinks guns are so evil and awful and terrible and no one but the government and its officials should own them, then why not stick a “Gun-Free Zone!” sticker on your car, your house, and your shirt? What in the world would the harm be in that? The cops will be there in 10 minutes so you have nothing to worry about.

You’re right – you didn’t need to spell that out. So it’s puzzling why you apparently felt the need to. No one has misunderstood anything you’ve said. You can toss out all the empty, vacuous statements (level the playing field!) and alleged statistics suggesting a negative correlation with legal firearm possession/reduced crime rates (which need to be cited to have any relevance btw, and maybe you could kindly demonstrate a consistency of support of that trend over time in any given place [e.g. US] amongst multiple sources or at the very least from any once source, as well as some beefy evidence of causality over coincidence while you’re at it) that you want. Your argument boils down to the basic “We need more good guy gunz to contend with the bad guyz/bad guy gunz!!” stance so common amongst supporters, which, as I had pointed out, is a flawed, weighty proposition that should give anyone with anything resembling a brain and conscience considerable pause at the very least for reasons so obvious as to not warrant mention.

As for your “Why not advertise personal zero gun tolerance with a billboard!?” proposal – that’s roughly akin to a hardcore white supremacist strolling alone through Harlem decked out in their Klan robes on a lazy Saturday…which is something you DON’T often see, incidentally! It’s almost as though even those harboring the krrrraaaaziest of beliefs (like, say, that guns are pretty crummy and the less the better) tend to be somewhat pragmatic and understand advertising it 24/7 or in certain contexts may not be in their best interests, or something! Boy you really turned my universe on its heel with that one. Not the faintest wisp of intellectual dishonesty there, no sir.

Calm down Clint Eastwood. Despite the fact that you may think everyone that doesn’t fall into the category of “criminal” should have the right to step in and administer vigilante justice whenever they please, you’re wrong.

You ever shoot at a moving target? I’m going to assume the answer to that is no, and if you and if you with your gun decide to go all cowboy in a crowded street when some punk steals an old lady’s purse.. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be within a block’s radius because chances are you are going to kill or injure someone else in the process.

Things can happen very quickly with children, you obviously don’t have them. My wife was cutting grass, kids were on swing set. She parked it, put the brake on, took the key out. Literally left it for all of a minute to get our dogs water. The kids climbed on it and knocked the brake loose and somehow got it rolling. Accidents happen but I appreciate your kind words 🙂

This is why we need, ya know, ED-209’s patroling every fucking inch of the nation, or at least metropolitan areas. Impartial, insusceptible to nerves/sweaty palms/butterfingers that cause them to slip up and put one through the head of sweet Granny Maybury instead of the cuckoo four feet to her left (nice job, hero!) and, despite being prone to malfunction and various fuckerys as all computers are, considerably more reliable than a fucking human being. It’s simple–wave around a hand cannon, get vaporized. Toy gun? Well, you shouldn’t be playing with those anyway you fucking dickweed, because these bad boys certainly don’t care about the difference! Hehe. Now, mind you–this is an optimal scenario wherein no drone shall ever be somehow misused for criminal purposes or sent on the fritz by fatherless midwestern teen males of average intelligence (hackers!). But yeah, totally. I’d trust one of these guys any day over, uh, some random assbag grad student with a CCW permit.

“If you take away everyone’s guns, then the only people who will have guns will be the cops and the bad guys. Now, I don’t want to sound like a Montana Militia dude, but a world where there are cops on every corner and the only people with guns are the cops and the bad guys sounds like one of the scariest dystopian shitscapes imaginable. People SHOULD be allowed to own guns, if for no other reason than because if they don’t, well, if and when the shit goes down (whatever said shit may be) I don’t want to have to depend on the cops and badguys to protect my family and interests. That sounds scary.

Now, having said that, I think we can all agree that enough people in America with severely malfunctioning computers have gotten their hands on assault rifles and used them to do enough unspeakable, unimaginable, horrible, nightmare inducing things that the idea of killing a whole flock of geese at once (for example) can’t POSSIBLY be enough of a reason to justify keeping these extremely dangerous weapons around. I guess, when it comes down to it, I fall into the group that thinks that people should be allowed to have guns, but not the super-killy ones, because, well, there are simply TOO MANY malfunctioning supercomputers out there, and if we’re gonna just sit around and ignore the fact that all these computers are malfunctioning, the least we can possibly do is make sure that it’s nigh impossible for the people under the command of these faulty computers to get guns that kill big flocks of people quickly and at once.”

A criminal background check would not have changed anything in this instance, as the perpetrator stole all his weapons from his mother and there is no background check that could ensure that any weapons you own couldn’t be stolen by anyone who knows where you store them. RE Assault rifles: An even deadlier massacre than Sandy Hook (VA Tech) was carried out with two hand guns… The majority of murder victims in America don’t die in mass killings, and the vast majority are not murdered by assault rifles, but hand guns. I’m pretty sure Nancy Lanza thought that she needed guns for when “shit goes down,” too. You see how that worked out for everyone. Your macho delusions are what enable this shit and feed the fire arms industry.

the shooter in newton was never diagnosed as having a malfunctioning computer. but our functioning computers in America are more than happy to give tax dollars to kill more children with drones overseas, but i guess those lives aren’t as important and it allowes us to not be alligned with those malfunctioning computers.being white and previliged rocks!

I find a far more useful exercise than the numbers game is the ol’ “envision a scenario where something is instantly erased in the present day and the implications for modern civilization” game! Cars/guns. Think about it, ya big dummy!

In the US more people get killed by guns than anywhere else in the world every year, yet…”a world where there are cops on every corner and the only people with guns are the cops and the bad guys sounds like one of the scariest dystopian shitscapes imaginable”?

If someone who would, for what ever reason to be angry with me, had the power to kill me with the literal pulling of a switch I would be scared shitless every time I step outside.

Whatever floats your boat I guess, but at least in our scary dystopian shitscapes in the Netherlands we haven’t had any idiots shooting down kids or students at schools so far.

That’s the funny (read: shitty) thing about the pro-gun (or, at least, pro-concealed weapon) viewpoint – like so many crappy justifications in life that don’t really hold up to scrutiny, it’s entirely dependent on appeals to personal interests, or more bluntly, selfishness (hiding behind dubious abstract concepts like “peeeewsoal riiiiiiiiights!” or appeals to altruism and nobility) …Nobody defends the “right” to a concealed weapon (with a straight face, anyway) by talking up how they could potentially be the one to take out the disgruntled loon popping off magnum rounds in Central Park before someone’s kid gets it. No, it’s “It’ll help me not get raped” or (cunt-y lisp) “It’s MY GOD-given right, buster brown!” …Well, what’s so great about (the royal) you? Stink-breath; average intelligence; shitty interests and affectations. Did you cure spinal meningitis? Oh, that wasn’t you? Why should you be entitled to impose one more little powderkeg of lethal potential (concealed weapon!) upon a bunch of fellow humans who don’t necessarily want anything to do with such, just so YOU can feel a little more secure on your jaunt to/from your shit-ass job/photography classes? That potential encounter with an attacker you’re hoping to diffuse doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Your sweaty, chubby lil’ index finger may pull the trigger at the wrong moment. Your lil’ jellyfish arm may betray you with the surge of “uh-oh” chemicals. You may bring a premature end to little Pedro! He just came here for a snow cone, see! Put that thing away before even more people are killed or hurt than would have otherwise been, you fucking incompetent bozo. Haaawnk! Haaaawnk! hehe~! haaaaawnk! haaaaawnk! You unqualified buffoon.

You are a talented man, Mr. Kelly. I appreciate your writings and thoughts. That closing line was absolutely brilliant and I feel the same way. There is a lot of talk around Missouri for militarizing the schools and letting teachers carry guns in the classroom. A huge problem would be inaccessibility in the face of emergency. Any teacher with a weapon would have to keep it under lock and key so that no students could ever get to it in times of anger, frustration, other emotions children feel whilst experiencing the pain of growing up. That locked situation will yield no assistance when a shooter wearing armor bursts into a room with a 30-round semi-automatic rifle.

Perhaps my biggest problem with guns in schools (I am a teacher, by the way) is the utter cynicism communicated to young people about the state of our society. It communicates this through hidden curriculum: “Our society is so fucked up that even our teacher needs a gun. We are so perpetually unsafe in our classroom that, at any moment, we might all be attacked and killed dead on the spot.” Can you imagine the sheer distrust that emerges when teachers are so distrustful of society that they feel the need to arm themselves when working with 8 year olds? It’s unconscionable.

That is no message I wish to communicate to my students.

Thank you Brendan for another brilliant piece of work. I love to share your parental writings with friends, parents, and other teachers.

I agree whole heartedy brendan. The mentality that the American people have when it comes to dealing with things like this is never actually attacking the root cause. It’s kind of like if your car transmission goes bad and your solution is getting an entirely new car and putting the old shitty transmission in the new car. Doesnt fix a thing and your damn car is just going to keep breaking down.

TVs and and small fixed scan rate monitors (e.g., CCTV or TV monitors, video display terminals) usually incorporate some kind of startup circuit to provide drive to the horizontal output transistor (HOT) until the flyback power supply is running. Yes, TVs and many monitors boot just like computers.